The present invention relates to a device for controlling a platform door located on the guideway of a track-bound vehicle.
Track-bound and automatically controlled vehicle systems are frequently operated on guideways that are supported on vertical beams a few meters above ground. In the area of railway stations, it is therefore necessary to provide platforms which are arranged at an appropriate level. The danger thus caused is that travelers coming too close to the platform edge may fall down and suffer injuries. It is therefore known to configure the platforms as systems closed towards the outside and to provide a platform door at those places where a vehicle door is located when a vehicle stops in the railway station. The purpose is to restrict passenger transfer between vehicle and platform to a system composed of double doors. However the prerequisite to be fulfilled is that the vehicle doors and platform doors may only be unlocked and opened either if a vehicle door and a platform door stand immediately opposite to each other or if the opening procedure ends up with the result that a closed protection wall of the platform stands opposite to an open vehicle door or if a closed outer wall of the vehicle stands opposite to an open platform door. Those cases must, however, be avoided in which an open vehicle door is not within the area of a protection wall of the platform or in which an open platform door does not stand opposite to an outer wall of the vehicle.
In known magnetic levitation railways which are run in a driverless mode, the control of the vehicles is performed from a stationary operation center by means of a fully-automatically working operations management technology. Status and control signals from and to the vehicle are mostly transmitted in a wireless mode. Therefore, it would in principle be conceivable also to control the platform doors in the wireless mode from the operation center and to release unlocking of the platform doors only when the vehicle has taken a precisely fixed nominal position after its stoppage in a railway station.
Such a control of platform doors would not be free of deficiencies. To begin with, it is remarkable that a release for opening the platform doors should be granted at the earliest after the operation center has verified that the vehicle is in the desired nominal position. For this purpose it is required to determine the vehicle location by the aid of information data carriers mounted at the guideway and by the aid of data acquisition units accommodated inside the vehicle, further to transmit the determined location signals to the operation center and then to compare the prescribed nominal position with the transmitted location signals in a travel computer of the operation center. If it has safely been ascertained that the vehicle has reached the nominal position and is on standstill, this status must again be communicated from the travel computer to the operation center, whereupon the operation center after a thorough examination can ultimately grant a release for the platform doors. This procedure produces delays in time due to run-times and times for processing the signals. Another disadvantage is that the release signals produced upon a positive outcome of the examination are fed in the wireless mode to a receiver located within the relevant railway station and from there transmitted to the door opening and/or closing mechanisms which would involve quite a substantial expenditure of cost. This will be the case especially if high redundancy and, hence, safety are demanded and if the necessary cost for a safety computer as well as the provision and safety check of the relevant software are taken in to account.